There is so much evidence at this point against race realism/ HBD. There is no possibility of it “could be false” without evoking some grand conspiracy. Can we never call it pseudoscience?
If the consensus is strong enough then yes, we should call it pseudoscience.
I read the Wikipedia article you linked on the topic and my feeling was that there’s some remaining disagreement in many places, but overall it does read as though the science supports environmental factors much more than genetic ones. I’m not 100% on how much I should trust it given political pressure and some yellow flags in the article like their uncritical mention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which have behaved awfully and at times tried to cancel people like Sam Harris or Maajid Nawaz, who are “clearly good people” in my book. (And they still have Charles Murray on their list of extremists, putting him in the same category as neo-nazis, which is awful and immoral.)
I already looked at the resources by Bob Jacobs and thought some of them seemed a bit condescending in the sense that I’d expect people who feel confident enough to downvote or upvote claims on this topic would already be familiar with them. (E.g., some of the points he makes would also speak against studying whether mammals are smarter than fish given that fish have more genetic diversity than all mammals together and are a bit of an “unnaturally drawn group in biology”.) That said, it’s good to highlight the point about African diversity and, e.g., Nigerians having higher education scores in some areas than Europeans (and high conscientiousness – whether it’s cultural or genetic).
Other points seem overstated to me (e.g., criticism of validity of IQ). I think the Wikipedia article you linked to is a better source to convince people that genetic influences may not play much of role.
On the topic of the discussion as a whole, the current situation is clearly very unfortunate. It seems like there are many people who only get interested in the topic because they have the impression there’s censorship and they’re against such censorship. If we slightly relaxed on what inferences are defensible to draw draw from the science, then most people would lose interest, which would lower social polarization? Maybe the best message to promote is something like “If there are genetic influences, they’re likely no larger than environmental ones, and there may not be, and overall the question doesn’t seem to have any moral or political/practical relevance.”
That’s a cool point by Klein.
If the consensus is strong enough then yes, we should call it pseudoscience.
I read the Wikipedia article you linked on the topic and my feeling was that there’s some remaining disagreement in many places, but overall it does read as though the science supports environmental factors much more than genetic ones. I’m not 100% on how much I should trust it given political pressure and some yellow flags in the article like their uncritical mention of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which have behaved awfully and at times tried to cancel people like Sam Harris or Maajid Nawaz, who are “clearly good people” in my book. (And they still have Charles Murray on their list of extremists, putting him in the same category as neo-nazis, which is awful and immoral.)
I already looked at the resources by Bob Jacobs and thought some of them seemed a bit condescending in the sense that I’d expect people who feel confident enough to downvote or upvote claims on this topic would already be familiar with them. (E.g., some of the points he makes would also speak against studying whether mammals are smarter than fish given that fish have more genetic diversity than all mammals together and are a bit of an “unnaturally drawn group in biology”.) That said, it’s good to highlight the point about African diversity and, e.g., Nigerians having higher education scores in some areas than Europeans (and high conscientiousness – whether it’s cultural or genetic).
Other points seem overstated to me (e.g., criticism of validity of IQ). I think the Wikipedia article you linked to is a better source to convince people that genetic influences may not play much of role.
On the topic of the discussion as a whole, the current situation is clearly very unfortunate. It seems like there are many people who only get interested in the topic because they have the impression there’s censorship and they’re against such censorship. If we slightly relaxed on what inferences are defensible to draw draw from the science, then most people would lose interest, which would lower social polarization? Maybe the best message to promote is something like “If there are genetic influences, they’re likely no larger than environmental ones, and there may not be, and overall the question doesn’t seem to have any moral or political/practical relevance.”